EARTHQUAKE / THE LONG ROAD BACK : Long Lines and Short Tempers : Assistance: Thousands overwhelm federal disaster centers. Many applicants come away with only a handful of promises.

For Shontoi Edwards, her home and hope crumbled by the heaving earth, dawn Thursday brought the promise of help. After waiting 15 hours, Edwards walked away from a federal disaster assistance center with a handful of promises--but empty-handed.

Edwards spent an hour filling out piles of forms at the Winnetka Recreation Center, but the money she needs to move from the park that has been home for the last four days may take 96 hours or more to arrive.

“Why tell people they were going to help you and we have nothing?” said Edwards, 35, still wearing the T-shirt and black pants she slipped on just before her Van Nuys apartment complex collapsed Monday.

As 11 assistance centers opened across Southern California, thousands of tense and tired earthquake victims such as Edwards overwhelmed state and federal aid agencies in search of money to move, to rebuild and to start over.

From Santa Monica to Santa Clarita, aid applicants--wearied by four days without the things they once took for granted--grew restless in long lines, some nearly coming to blows and one trying to sell appointments with federal officials for $5 apiece.

For thousands of families, the centers offered grants of up to $12,800 to help defray expenses, assistance in dealing with private insurance companies and information on deducting damage expenses from income taxes. Businesses were offered small-business loans. Those whose homes were destroyed qualified for housing vouchers to help them move into new quarters.

Even before the doors opened at 1 p.m., it became painfully apparent to those who had waited hours in line that what took seconds to destroy will require much longer to replace. Many of the makeshift centers, especially in the devastated northern San Fernando Valley, appeared woefully unprepared to handle a crush of quake victims.

Some applicants were unable to receive assistance. As officials shut down the Winnetka center, one woman shouted from the edge of the crowd, “Don’t you know you can start a riot here?” A crying man said, “You don’t know how important this is to me.”

Officials assured quake victims that they would keep working over the next several weeks until they had taken claims from everyone who suffered losses in Monday’s magnitude 6.6 temblor.

“We’re trying to make appointments for everyone because obviously the number of people out there today is beyond our capacity,” FEMA spokesman Kevin Healey said.

For most, Thursday was only the beginning of a paperwork labyrinth that may take weeks or months to negotiate.

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And what a beginning it was.

Hundreds spent the night in chilly weather--some arriving as early as 10 p.m. Wednesday--and took turns with friends and neighbors to hold places in line. Many, like Katriena McCord of West Hills, had no place else to go.

“Anything I can get would help. I’ve lost everything,” she said.

At the Santa Monica center, several people rushed the doors when they opened, cutting ahead of people who had been in line for up to five hours.

“Go to the back of the line!” one person yelled.

Two men shouted at one another and almost came to blows.

One of the applicants, Greg Green, stepped forward and helped to restore order by appointing himself line monitor.

At the Winnetka center, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros and Transportation Secretary Federico Pena were mobbed by impatient crowds. Edwards, the Van Nuys woman frustrated by delays, shouted at Cisneros as he toured the facility.

“My apartment is knocked down completely,” she said. “What should I do?”

Cisneros responded: “We’re trying to help you, but there is no such thing as an instantaneous” fix. Later, talking about the coveted housing vouchers, Cisneros said: “Some people are disappointed because they thought they would leave with one. But this is a one-, two- or three-day process.”

As lines in some locations snaked for hundreds of yards, FEMA officials urged aid applicants to call for appointments on the agency’s toll-free hot line--(800) 462-9029.

“It’s so much easier to call that number than to spend your whole day standing in lines,” said Francis Alvarez, manager of the facility at the Sylmar Recreation Center.

But Lynn Solky, whose Sherman Oaks condominium was ravaged by the quake, said she tried to call the number 200 times before she gave up in frustration and joined the lines in Van Nuys. “It’s a zoo,” she said.

At a FEMA emergency office in Southwest Los Angeles, the frustration of the last few days boiled over when more than 1,000 people arrived, some of them as early as 4 a.m.

Officials, mindful of the crowd, began handing out appointment times at 11 a.m. But that gesture, meant to defuse tensions, only added to them.

By 1:45 p.m., some in the crowd refused to wait any longer. As Los Angeles Police Officer Reginald Paige attempted to hand out a stack of appointment times, about 50 people in the crowd moved toward him and one--a big man no one attempted to stop--grabbed the applications from Paige’s hand.

The man walked down the street and began selling the appointment slips for $5 each.

Karen Armstead bought one.

“It’s a shame that I had to get it this way,” said Armstead, whose Leimert Park apartment lost a chimney. “But everything is so disorganized. I had no choice.”